2018 RETROSPECTIVE – Investments and plans in TRANSPORTATION most interesting to users of eKapija

Illustration (Photo: Milos Muller/shutterstock.com)

The investment team of eKapija has analyzed and formed a ranking list of the investments and investment ideas that our users found the most interesting in 2018. The results are very interesting. Some are expected, although there are plenty of surprises too, which is why we’ve decided to share this information with you.

We present the most interesting projects in the TRANSPORTATION category.

Quicker, more reliable, better and more efficient connection of Serbia with the world, but also between different parts of the country, is high on the list of the state`s priorities, causing a lot of discussion. Today, traffic routes in Serbia are being built, but are slower to finish and open. Full-profile highways have not reached the Macedonian and the Bulgarian border, though they should have. The modern traffic route toward Western Serbia still comes down to a short section from Ljig to Cacak...

Large investments in railways are new in modern Serbia, which hasn`t seen anything like it since the construction of the Bar Railway and the Belgrade Hub facilities. Trains are still late, in the terms of both the schedules and the global standards, but it can`t be denied that works are being done on railways.

There is a constant upward trend in air transport. For the first time after 90 years, the Belgrade Airport is run by a foreign concessionaire since late 2018. The state took over the management of the Nis Airport from the city.

The winner in 2018 is...

The announced, but not yet started, route of the so-called Corridor 11 (historically, this is in fact the Belgrade-South Adriatic highway), from Preljina (Cacak), through Pozega (the construction from Cacak to Pozega has been agreed with a Chinese partner), to Boljare on the Montenegrin border. The estimate is that this will cost Serbia around EUR 2 billion more, which is a lot, but the two neighboring countries will probably be linked this way in the foreseeable future, because, in addition to activities in Serbia, the construction of the first section from Podgorica to the Kolasin area is in progress in Montenegro.

The second spot belongs to the completion of Corridor 10 through Serbia to Macedonia and Greece (the so-called South Branch). It should have been completed a long time ago, but the difficult terrain slowed the construction down, and the slope at the Grdelica Gorge collapsed as well. In addition to slowing the works down, this also cast doubt on the planning methodology, as well as the adopted technical solutions for the stabilization of the ground. Reporting on this topic, Serbian media have been writing for years that seaside will finally be available by highway, but this will certainly not be the case, as the Greeks are certainly not finishing the missing section north of Thessaloniki any time soon.

(Photo: saiko3p/shutterstock)

The concession of the Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport placed third. This is the biggest such arrangement in Serbia`s history: the French partner, Vinci Airports S.A.S, paid a one-off concession fee of EUR 501 million, and total investments should reach the amount of EUR 1.46 billion. Major works have been announced so that the airport would expand and modernize. The concession period is 25 years.

In 2018, the Belgrade Airport broke all its previous records: over 5.6 million passengers passed through it, and the positive trend is expected to continue, as several airlines have announced the launch of flights to Belgrade (Air France, ASL Airlines, Air Arabia), whereas others have announced flights to new destinations or an increase in the number of flights. The concessionaire denied the speculation in the media and on social networks that the name of Nikola Tesla had been erased from the airport`s name, claiming that the official logo had been merely adapted to the company`s standards, emphasizing the name of the city and “Vinci”.

The fourth spot belongs to the construction of Patrijarha Pavla Blvd in Belgrade (Rakovica). This is quite understandable: the Ada Bridge, which has been preventing a total collapse when it comes to the traffic in Belgrade for several years now, will become even more useful when it is connected by four lanes with the Rakovica road. On the New Belgrade side, an agreement has been signed with Energoprojekt Niskogradnja, the Institute of Transportation CIP and Bauwesen on the formation of a rail route in Umetnosti Blvd, also on the access route of the Ada Bridge, which is great news, especially for those who work at the central business district in New Belgrade.

Perhaps due to readers` nostalgia for the “Shell red” petrol from Hungary, which was sold for 2.5 to 3 Deutschmarks during the 1990s sanctions, the news that Shell had officially started selling petroleum products in Serbia caused a lot of attention, placing fifth on our list. The price of fuel is the burning issue in the Serbian economy. That`s why the arrival of a new name, especially this kind of a serious global company, is cause for hope.

(Photo: Daniel Caluian/shutterstock.com)

The sixth spot belongs to the now old story about the Belgrade subway. This is a good opportunity to pay homage to Gaga Spasojevic of Vecernje Novosti, who once wrote “In a few years...” in an article about the Belgrade subway. The city has changed plans and the first line will not go to New Belgrade, but to Makisko Polje, and the left bank of the Sava and the hill on the right bank might be connected by an underground tunnel, instead of the bridge which has been planned for decades.

The seventh spot belongs to the development of the Sava coastal area and Karadjordjeva Street. The railway is gone and the sidewalk will be expanded, which is supposed to improve the living and working conditions in the area, which features numerous historically important buildings.

The visualization of the main bus station

The strange project of the moving of the Main Bus Station due to the Belgrade Waterfront project placed eighth. A structure was built in New Belgrade near the railway station and the flee market, which should have been a temporary bus station, but a new bus platform and parking lot were built for inter-city bus transport soon afterward – in the Belgrade Waterfront area! It is now clear that the main bus station will remain where it`s always been, at least for a while, unlike the Main Railway Station, which we`ve lost.

The opinion of the editor-in-chief of eKapija is that, when it comes to transportation, the year 2018 was marked by the removal of the Main Railway Station from the center of Belgrade. Aside from to the capital of Serbia, only Tirana has done so. This valuable resource should never have been lost, especially now that fuel prices have gone up and when there`s a scarcity of bus drivers in the labor market. Unlike the Belgrade from 130 years ago, today`s Belgrade stands out for all the wrong reasons – it`s a city without a railway station that could meet even the basic requirements.

The continuation of the construction of the bypass route around Belgrade took the ninth spot. The Azerbaijani and the Chinese should finally make it possible to reach Nis from Novi Sad, while avoiding Mostarska Petlja and Autokomanda. However, readers shouldn`t have any illusions: the Gazela bridge only has a small percentage of vehicles in transit at the rush hour in the afternoon – the rest is intercity traffic. In other words, traffic jams in Belgrade will not disappear once this bypass route is completed.

The Morava Corridor placed tenth. Serbia made an agreement on its construction with an American giant, Bechtel.

The expansion of the tram network in Belgrade to include the Ada Bridge did not make the Top 10, although, in our opinion, its belongs there. The public transport in Belgrade is one of the biggest consumers of resources. The loss of GSP`s buses is measured in hundreds of millions of euros. On the other hand, when there are enough passengers (as is the case with Belgrade), rail traffic is much cheaper than road traffic. If there is no money for the subway, there`s certainly enough for tram traffic.

The Nis-Pristina highway, pompously called the Peace Highway, is next on the list. Although there is no actual war, there are sanctions of Pristina when it comes to Serbia goods. If Belgrade gave up on this highway, however, it would hurt Prokuplje and Kursumlija most of all.

The 13th spot belongs to the long announced Novi Sad-Sabac-Loznica highway. We hope that the unfortunate placing doesn`t mean that this project will meet the same fate as the “wartime” railway between Loznica and Valjevo.

The new Belgrade-Budapest railway, surprisingly, took only the 15th spot, even though it is one of the biggest projects in the country. Sergey Alexeyevich Pavlov, General Director of RZD International, the Russian partner in this project, confirmed in his interview with eKapija that it would be a genuine high-speed railway, with the maximum speed of 200 km/h in the first phase, to be potentially increased to 250 km/h later on.

The Sava bridge near Belgrade Waterfront placed 21st. Belgrade authorities announce the construction of a new bridge, which however entails the previous demolition of the Old Sava Bridge, which should be moved to Ada Ciganlija as a bridge for pedestrians and cyclists and connect with New Belgrade. If the old bridge is not operational while the new one is being built, it will lead to traffic jams of previously unseen proportions.